Anyone lucky enough to have heard the Cup of Life by Ricky Martin knows that official anthems to accompany sporting events couldn’t possibly be a bad idea. So thank goodness London 2012 has not one but five.

For Chinese-Americans in Washington, the only party in town on Wednesday night was the state dinner at the White House. The courtiers from the Chinese embassy and Hu Jintao's entourage from Beijing were joined by the glitterati of Chinese-American society.

Bird flu, or la grippe aviaire as it is known in France, is all the rage in Parisian nightclubs. Not the disease, you understand, but the dance, a variation on the popular style coupé-décalé, which originated in the Ivory Coast.

As China prepares to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic, a new blockbuster tells the story of its founding. Naturally, the nation's biggest movie stars took part, as Clifford Coonan reports from Beijing